And This Is All There Ever Was
by Min Daae
Summary: AU. In which Light has confessed, in order to win. Dark-ish, kind of weird, featuring Light and L bouncing off of each other even still. Owes some possibly a lot to the brilliant story "Alternative."


It is easy to say, "this is what madness is like."

Madness is like nothing else.

In some countries, Light remembers reading, one method of torture is that of the mock execution. It works like this: the victim is told that the day of their execution is approaching. Every day, the victim braces himself, preparing mind and body for death, and every day, it doesn't come. That kind of sustained stress takes a toll on the human body, and a worse one on the mind. It is a tool engineered specifically to create suffering.

_From one murderer to another…I'll see you in hell. _

In the end they are both children, playing with weapons so much larger than themselves. Children have no mercy. And so when Light upended the board, neither did L. That was what made Light want to laugh. L was far angrier at him for breaking the game than for all the hundreds he had killed.

_Why did you confess? _L asked him, and Light remembers laughing, eyes glittering. _Not guilt, surely, or remorse. _

_It was the thing that would anger you most, _he said, which was half truth and half lie, and then L's foot slams into his stomach.

His father might have been ashamed, a little; his mother was surely heartbroken, if she knew the truth. At the end it didn't matter, because it was only ever him and L, and he had won. In his own terrible way.

"Apple," Ryuk says, and Light doesn't look around, sitting the same way he always does, watching the door, elbows on his knees and eyes slanted up to see the security camera over the doorframe that had not been installed by the hospital. "Light, get me apples…"

Sometimes Light wonders why Ryuk doesn't just end this; write Light's name in his book and move on. He'd asked, once, and the only response had been a laugh dry as sandpaper. _Then I'd never know who wins, _he said, and Light had almost smiled.

After he had confessed, looking at L the whole time and watching his expression and the lack of change that marked him as furious, L had not been the first to speak. They had cuffed his hands – to each other, not L's this time. L looked up, and Light, who had never looked away from him once, allowed his eyes to ask the question. _What now, Ryuzaki?_

Someone, Aizawa probably had said it, _prison, _and L had cut him off, softly.

Light watches the red light on the security camera blink. L hates to lose. That was why this. It was punishment. Light ruined L's game. So L took Light's mind. It was only a matter of revenge. Nothing personal.

The light in the room adjacent to his comes on, and L slips in, sat down on the same chair as always, knees pulled up to his chest. His eyes are like black beetles wings, opaque and shiny.

"Hello, Light," he says into the microphone. His voice is tinny and mechanical. It doesn't sound human. L is still trying to win. L has, after all, never lost.

"Apples," Ryuk hisses. "Tell him to get me some apples." Light says nothing. To lose, he knew now, you had to play the game. If you didn't play, then you couldn't lose.

"Is the shinigami still with you, Light?"

He pictured the room again, though he had not looked around it in some time. A mirror over the bed, behind his back. A sink, a shower, and a toilet, behind a curtain. All white. Small but not cramped. L had the Death Note, so of course he can see Ryuk. It is an obvious question, intended to insult him, perhaps, sting him into answering.

Light does not take the bait. L is silent for a long time.

"What were you hoping for when you confessed, Light-kun?"

There is no such thing as despair. There has never been such a thing.

Light does not answer. There is no victory, he understands, over a monster; not when it has chained itself. L thinks he is planning something, perhaps. L does not understand that there is no more _planning. _

Light laughs until his ribs ache and he cannot breathe, until some faceless doctor hurries in and sedates him with the rushed awkwardness of fear. He hopes that L is watching. He hopes that L is afraid.

He wants someone besides himself to be hurting.

~.~

Before, he thought he knew what it was to be bored. Now he has forgotten how. When there is nothing else, boredom ceases to have a meaning. L has come again. It is easier and easier to ignore him.

"You tire me," L says, sitting with his nose nearly pressed against the Plexiglass that is his walls. "Does it please you to hear that, Light? I did not put you here to torture you."

_And that,_ Light thinks, almost smiling, _is a lie. _But he makes no accusation.

"Do you even know what you are doing anymore?"

It is difficult not to laugh. _No, I know what I am doing. I am dying. I can break rules forever, L. I never have to follow yours. _The security camera winks at him. L sighs. "It's a waste, Light." Ryuk snickers.

When L is gone, Light turns and presses his face against the mirror, smears his own wet tears on the silver surface. There is a brutality here that his subtle soul abhors. And Ryuk watches him, contorted at impossible angles, as though Light is a curiosity of taxidermy, shot, stuffed and posed on L's shelf.

~.~

There are thirty-one million, five-hundred-thirty-six thousand seconds in one year. The most numerous order of insects is that of the beetle, Coleoptera, followed by the moths and butterflies, Lepidoptera. The first fundamental theorem of calculus states that if _f _is continuous on the closed interval _[a, b] _and _F _is the antiderivative of _f _on _[a, b] _then –

But he has forgotten the rest. L is here again. He does not want to listen.

"Your father asked to speak to you," L says, eyes trained on Light, and Light has always wondered how it is so easy to look at someone like that. "I told him it was your decision. I think he may die before the year is out. He is hollow, now."

_Just like you and me. _Light does not answer. His father doesn't need to see him like this, he has decided, and more importantly; to answer would be to forfeit. One word becomes two as easily as one lie becomes two, and then a multitude.

He can hear the needling in L's voice. Perhaps he is becoming desperate. Perhaps he senses that their time together is running out. "Did you ever care for anyone besides yourself?" It is such a predictable question, he almost wants to chide his rival. _You can do better than that, L. Come now. Make an effort. For me. _

His mouth trembles, but Light does not laugh.

"Are you eating? I am not going to let you starve, Light, you ought to know better than that. I don't believe you want the humiliation of a feeding tube."

Even easier to ignore. When the time comes, all the feeding tubes in the world will not matter. And in that case, even still…he will have won.

"So what should I tell your father? That you are completely vacant of all of your once vaunted intelligence?"

_You cannot provoke me. _Light's eyes are getting dry from watching the security camera without blinking, so he closes them. The air conditioning kicks in, and he listens to it hum without interest.

"I have noticed that you are only so unresponsive when I'm actually here. You seem to have no compunction about moving or speaking when it is only the camera. Could you explain to me why the difference is important?"

Light can feel himself start to shake, minutely. He's going to laugh. He could laugh until his lungs burst. It would infuriate Ryuzaki – or it would give him the response that he needs. He can hear L lean forward, one hand against the glass.

"Light, what is it?" L sounds almost anxious, but Light knows better than to fall for that. He tosses his head back and smiles instead. He has never noticed before how white is not none of the colors but all of them, and he can see them swirling over each other now, within the ceiling. It is a bleak future, to think of staying here.

So it's a good thing he knows he won't be staying.

Sooner or later Ryuk will run out of patience, and win the game for him. _Checkmate, L, _he thinks, and the laugh bubbles up behind his teeth and bursts out of him like a living thing, clawing at the glass because the room is too small to hold it in.

~.~

L's voice is flat and unamused. "What do you want?" He asks, sharply. Light can see him standing, or slouching, and isn't that uncommon?

"Apples," Ryuk hisses, bouncing uncomfortably around the glass cell, and they both ignore him.

"You seem to have no interest in visitation. You haven't responded to offers of better accommodation. In fact, it is safe to say that you haven't responded to anything. You are holding out for something, Light Yagami. What is it?"

Light tried not to let his mouth twitch.

"I am not," he says through gritted teeth, "Going to execute you." Not until I've won, Light can hear under his voice.

L grows tired of the silence quickly. Perhaps he knows the likelihood of it being broken is less than forty percent. "I will come back when you are ready to speak," he says, cool once again. "And not before. Good day, shinigami."

Light looks up at the security camera and smiles a little more. He knows L will be back before that.

He'll never be able to resist.

~.~

Madness is like nothing else.

Unless madness is like a shinigami doing handstands, and breathing on your ear, _Hey Light, I'm sick of waiting. It's been interesting. _

Unless madness is like the smile when you've won everything there is to win.

Unless this, here, now, is madness.

He looks up at the security camera, winking its small red light of an eye at him. "L," he manages to say, "I've-"

_Somewhere in another life, Light Yagami breathes his last on a stairwell in an empty warehouse. The worst, now, is over. _


End file.
